6579 Results for “production”
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The Editor’s Signature
Alex Saks remembers the process of producing Thoroughbreds, the dark suburban teen thriller written and directed by Cory Finley, as a whirlwind. At the time, Finley was a hot up-and-coming playwright making his first foray into filmmaking, and he didn’t have an established team of collaborators. With a limited window of actor availability, production launched shortly after Finley delivered a script, which meant there was a tight window to hire key crew. Among the most important decisions the team had to make was who would edit the movie. “[An editor] really is the department head on the movie, other than […]
by Max Cea on Sep 18, 2024 -
Carlos A.F. Lopez
Carlos A.F. Lopez distinctly remembers the “rainy, gross Seattle day” that forever changed his relationship to movies. “I was a goth 12-year-old, and my step-dad took me to see Seven,” he recalls. “He was like, ‘Oh, that movie made me feel awful!’ I said, ‘Me too, but in the best way.’” A lifelong Seattleite, the 42-year-old Lopez came of age in the “grunge era,” originally finding his artistic footing in that “tight-knit underground scene” as a music video director for friends’ bands. One of his proudest videos is for “Bong Life” by local act The Intelligence. Granted free rein to […]
by Emily Huse on Sep 18, 2024 -
Paris Peterson
Paris Peterson was acting in Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei’s L.A.-shot Cam, and showed up on set “just to hang out and PA.” When production designer Emma Rose Meade ducked her head in the room and asked, “Does anyone here know how to wallpaper?” Peterson immediately volunteered—as a child actor and the son of artist parents, the Boston native was accustomed to watching his mother build sets for amateur theater productions. “I must have done a good job,” he remembers, because when he moved from New York to Los Angeles two years later, Meade “started to bring me on to […]
by Emily Huse on Sep 18, 2024 -
Subtle Inconsistencies: Filmmakers and Generative AI in 2024
In Orhan Pamuk’s novel The Black Book, there’s a story about a mannequin maker and his underground workshop. The craftsman believes that after the introduction of cinema, people began to lose their natural gestures and now simply imitate the movements and behaviors of actors they see on the big screen. To preserve natural and native mannerisms, he undertakes an immense archival project: He makes mannequins of people performing small gestures in great detail. I’m curious what the craftsman would do faced with generative AI. AI film festivals and competitions are growing in popularity. Last May, the second annual Runway AI […]
by Deniz Tortum on Sep 18, 2024 -
Clementine Narcisse
Clementine Narcisse, a senior at NYC’s School of Visual Arts, winces when she realizes that I recognize her from one of her recent TikToks. “I forget that when you put stuff on the internet it can go viral,” she laughs about the video, which pokes fun at nonmonogamy. “Hopefully, I’ll be known for my films and not my dumbass TikToks.” The 21-year-old can rest assured that her current output—completed as requirements for her SVA degree—distinguish her as a rising talent most “content creators” couldn’t dream of aspiring to. Her passion, vision and voice are discernable, remarkable for someone who helmed […]
by Emily Huse on Sep 18, 2024 -
“We Ascribe this Cuteness to Older Women”: Sarah Friedland on Familiar Touch
Depicting aging and diminishing mental acuity, with increasing candor about same, essentially has become its own subgenre—the drama of descent or disappearance. Sarah Friedland’s Familiar Touch feels like something different, eschewing the conventions of linear decline to stay rooted in the present-tense bodily experience of its protagonist: Ruth Goldman, played by a galvanizing Kathleen Chalfant. Beyond the subjective design of the filmmaking—comprising not just what we hear, but how we understand the premise of any given scene—this is a catalyzing collaboration between Chalfant, storied veteran of both stage (Wit) and screen, and Friedland, a student of choreography who sought out […]
by Nicolas Rapold on Sep 13, 2024 -
“It Sounded Like a Good Title”: Jeremy Saulnier on Rebel Ridge
In Jeremy Saulnier’s breakthrough films Blue Ruin and Green Room, the writer-director thrust protagonists into violent cacophonies they weren’t equipped to navigate. With his new Netflix actioner Rebel Ridge, Saulnier centers his story on a hero much more adept at meeting force with force. The film stars Aaron Pierre as a Marine hand-to-hand combat expert who comes to a small southern town to bail out his cousin. Before he can do so, his bail money is confiscated by the corrupt, militarized local police force (led by chief Don Johnson) via a bogus civil asset forfeiture claim. Confrontations—both verbal and physical—ensue. […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Sep 11, 2024 -
TIFF 2024: Lázaro at Night, Hard Truths
Bell and Bulgari are gone as sponsors, but Listerine is one of 37 new ones at TIFF 2024. This year, the defining image of the fest’s early days has been the 95-milliliter bottles of Listerine Total Care (Mild Mint) neatly arrayed on mini-shelves next to the sinks in the washrooms of the festival’s Lightbox headquarters. There, the walls are branded with mock-movie poster key art for “Listerine: The Movie,” with a bottle of that pink liquid sandwiched between five-star laurels for “Refreshing Plot Twist” and “Breath of Fresh Air.” An employee stocking those bottles estimated that over a thousand are […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 9, 2024 -
“With Viktor I Approached Sign Language Just Like Any Other Language”: Olivier Sarbil on His TIFF-premiering doc Viktor
One of the cinematic highlights of this year’s TIFF, Olivier Sarbil’s Ukraine-set (and Darren Aronofsky-produced) Viktor follows the titular protagonist, a Kharkiv resident who lives with his widowed mother and faces a most unusual conundrum. Desperate to defend his country, Viktor — a sword-loving giant of a man whose bible is Miyamoto Musashi’s The Strategy of the Samurai — is nevertheless blocked from joining the war effort because he just so happens to be Deaf. Fortunately, Viktor possesses the dogged determination of a noble warrior and manages to convince the local army to take him on as a volunteer photojournalist […]
by Lauren Wissot on Sep 8, 2024 -
Resurrecting Kathleen Parlow: Sofia Bohdanowicz on Her TIFF-Premiering Measures for a Funeral
Around a decade ago, Sofia Bohdanowicz began what would become a cycle of films, encompassing the features Never Eat Alone, MS Slavic 7 and A Woman Escaped (co-directed by Blake Williams and Burak Çevik) and the shorts Veslemøy’s Song and Point and Line to Plane, starring Deragh Campbell (who is often credited as cowriter or codirector) as Audrey Benac, a sort of fictional alter-ego who has encounters with art, and in particular with the artistic legacy of Bohdanowicz’s forbears. In Veslemøy’s Song, Audrey travels to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts to listen to a haunting vintage […]
by Mark Asch on Sep 7, 2024
